


Flicker

by Miss_Murdered



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angel!Keith, Human!Lance, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 21:46:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8770588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Murdered/pseuds/Miss_Murdered
Summary: There was one rule of being an angel. Don't fall in love with a human. But Keith can't help breaking that rule...





	

People didn’t see them. Not really. They were a flicker. A thing that people saw from the corner of their eyes and then didn’t register. Keith didn’t mind. He’d never really been anything to anyone. Always been alone. Always lived in the shadows. But sometimes he missed being seen. Sometimes he missed feeling _something._

Of course, when they wanted to be _seen,_ they could – but that was a power they used sparingly and Keith knew that all too well.

It was cold when Keith walked through the snow covered streets. He wore a thick wool coat, a hat and a scarf but still he felt the bone-numbing chill in his every limb, his body feeling ready to give in and find a cheap hotel room that he could check in via computer screens so that he could crawl under blankets and forget about everything. Yet he couldn’t. Not tonight. He had somewhere to be.

And that somewhere was the diner that had been made out of an old railway car – the diner that he worked at. That he’d always worked at.

Keith was a good angel. Really, he was. He never intervened in human life and viewed it all with a detachment that was befitting of his place in the world. He knew he had one job – to be there at the moment of death. Yet right now he was doing things he should not do. All because he’d fallen in love with a human.

He thought of Shiro. Shiro had fallen in love once… once a long time ago. And he had been punished. The arm was one thing, now an ineffective and cold piece of metal attached to his limb, yet his other punishment had been Keith. Keith becoming an angel of death, too.

Shiro had never forgiven himself for falling in love with a lonely human. And that was exactly what Keith had been. He had grown up in a series of foster homes. In orphanages. He had always had so little to hold onto that he easily moved on. He often wondered what it felt like to have a family – to feel love. Yet it wasn’t something he experienced. Instead, Keith had been labelled a problem teenager and he’d never found a home.

It wasn’t until he was older that Keith settled, planted roots, yet it was probably too late. Relationships floundered, his job was dull within an insurance firm and soon Keith didn’t want to fight the battle of the daily grind. That was when Shiro intervened. That’s when Shiro should have let Keith die. Shiro shouldn’t have saved him as it seemed his action had only caused them more angst.

Though Keith supposed he didn’t mind being an angel. He even liked the job. When people told him his dreams… what they thought was going to come after death. He had always been a quiet guy. He could listen. He could comfort. And he never offered advice even if he could. He sometimes felt the death harder – the children, the lovers, those before their time… yet he moved on. Keith always moved on.

But right now, instead of moving on and forgetting, Keith had come back to a city he should not have been in to see a guy he should not see again.

He was being selfish. It wasn’t just him that Keith was going to doom. But he couldn’t stop his footfalls, couldn’t stop his bodies movement as he arrived in front of the neon.

The first time Keith had visited, it had been a pit stop between jobs, a need for coffee and comfort. At times, so alienated from people, Keith would pause in coffee shops, in train stations, in airports, in department stores and breathe in life. He’d remember what it was like to be a part of it and he ordered a hot chocolate or a caramel latte and tried to taste the sweetness on his tongue. It didn’t work – he didn’t have his human senses like he used to – but it brought back memories in a spiral, drowning him in the mundane things he missed.

The diner was already decorated for Christmas when Keith walked in and he smiled at the trees and the tinsel decorating the place. It was over the top. It was as though Christmas had thrown up in the place. It was _exactly_ what Keith expected. Exactly what he expected of Lance.

Lance saw him as soon as he walked in as Keith found it far too easy to make himself visible when it came to him. It was his easy smile, it was his lazy wave and it was his the way he looked so damn happy to see Keith. No one had ever looked at Keith that way.

“Long time no see!” Lance said as Keith walked over to the counter and took a seat on the stool. “Usual?”

Keith nodded as he removed his scarf, his gloves and brushed the snow from his hair.

“One Lance special hot chocolate with marshmallows, whipped cream, caramel sauce and chocolate sprinkles!”

With an enthusiasm that betrayed the late night and the empty diner, Lance made the drink and Keith watched, unable to take his eyes off the way the blue jeans fitted perfectly over Lance’s ass, or the way the white t-shirt clung under every muscle underneath the striped apron. Lance always looked so good. And Keith reminded himself not to stare and instead trained his gaze on a Santa ornament on the counter next to him.

It was a torture… a torture to come but Keith couldn’t help himself. Maybe it was his own punishment. Or maybe he was just a masochist. Whatever, Keith wasn’t able to forget about Lance however hard he tried.

“Here you go!” Lance said as he presented the drink with a flair.

“Thanks,” Keith replied, a smile on his face he couldn’t hide as he took a sip and ended up with cream and sauce on his nose which Lance rubbed off with his thumb.

It was a gesture that made Keith shiver. And one that he tried to forget as they talked.

Keith had never been a talker – not until Lance but they talked and talked and talked… Talked until closing and when Keith knew he should leave. It was his last opportunity as he stood outside as Lance locked the door. But Keith didn’t take the opportunity. And he failed utterly when Lance kissed him the falling snow and offered him to stay at his place. 

It was a cheap apartment but Keith paid no mind to it. He had lived in a soulless box and Lance’s was anything but – walls filled with posters, robot actions figures on every surface, blankets and cushions covering the couch. It was a home. And Keith felt at home for the first time in his life.

And that was before they started the kissing, the removing of coats and the fumbling off of jeans due to numb fingers. The bedroom was not far, the apartment small, but they didn’t make it and Keith didn’t care. Not when Lance was pressed against him, not when their lips were meeting each other in such a hurried needy way, tongues swirling and noses bumping in impatience. Keith had fantasied what was under that apron and it did not disappoint. He kissed at scars from childhood injuries and the tattoo of a lion and he licked at nipples while his fingers skittered over Lance’s spine.

Sat on the couch, his jeans at his ankles, his t-shirt off, Keith looked up at Lance as he rode him, his body moving perfectly and arching in the dim light of the apartment. The preparation had been hasty, needy, desperate and Lance had decided when it was enough. He’d gripped at Keith’s cock and sat back, engulfing Keith in a heat he never thought he’d feel again.

Keith kissed at every part of Lance he could reach, he dug his fingers into Lance’s thighs and moaned his pleasure into tanned skin. He didn’t want it to stop. He wanted it to last forever, to be trapped forever in _this_ life. A life where he and Lance lived in this apartment and fucked in the day and made love all night. But Keith’s life had never happened like he had wanted it to. Instead, orgasm came  and his body pulsed and in that moment he would do anything to stay. Even though he knew he had nothing left to give.

“Stay?” Lance offered in the post-coital haze, the chill of the apartment starting to create goosebumps across their skins.

“I can’t… but I’ll be back,” Keith promised.

A promise that tasted like tar on his lips. He would be back… one day. Just not for a long time.

They exchanged phone numbers and lingering kisses until Keith made his leave. He walked outside, the feel of Lance’s body still lingering on his fingertips and he looked up to the sky, the snow still falling down in flickering flakes.

“You know you can never see him again… until…?”

Keith nodded, his mouth dry, his heart heavy and his body weak. He’d known all along it wouldn’t happen again. It shouldn’t have even happened once. But he was glad it was Shiro who came to him. And he was glad he was allowed his one moment of true happiness in his otherwise lonely life.

“I’m sorry, Keith.”

Shiro meant it. Keith knew that. He saw it in his eyes, in his stance, in the way he looked defeated. Keith didn’t blame Shiro. Yet it seemed like Shiro would always blame himself. Maybe that’s why there was no punishment now. It was Shiro’s way of making it up to Keith if there was any way he could.

“I had one night,” Keith said softly and he started to walk, his pace slow in the snow.

Beside him, Shiro caught up, walking beside him, his pace matching Keith’s. They didn’t say anything, they didn’t need to, both wrapped up in their own thoughts. As Keith tried to commit everything about Lance to memory as the next time he would see him would be at the end of Lance’s life and he wanted to remember him just as he had been this one perfect night.


End file.
